Subscribe to my blog and my new posts will be sent to your email

The first thing that I remember about hooking The Hidden Stone is that I was so excited to work on a piece that I had designed. I had taken the elements from an old medieval Hermetic manuscript which showed a dragon in a circle with his tail in his mouth and the tree of knowledge growing out of him. The flowers were charming, sprouting as the tree.

I started hooking the dragon in the center from a purple coat. Since I didn't know how to hook yet, the dragon looked terrible. In fact everything I hooked looked terrible until I got the first concentric ring finished on the rug, about the size of a large dinner plate. Once I started hooking beyond that, something clicked, and I got the rhythm and the height of the loops right. I was so excited. I could finally hook.

I began hooking this rug in the open-aired barn at the historical Waterloo farm. It was spring 1995, so everything was fresh and new. Even me. It was here that my art was born.

Manuscript details: This is a page from the Alchemical Manuscript of 1550 housed in Basle University Library. It is called "The Flower of the Wise." In the center is the cosmic egg surrounded by the dragon Uroboros which is the symbol of unformed matter. Out of the egg grows a red flower representing gold, a white flower representing silver, and between them a blue flower of wisdom. Underneath them are the sun and the moon and the philosopher's star.